Call me Ishmael?

Pic by Spike

It's been eight years or so since I was last on the water sailing a dinghy. James, my experienced buddy, told me that the essentials come back to you very quickly. He was right, although I'm very glad he was sitting next to me as we glided over the barely-ruffled surface of Lake Tuggeranong. At times we came almost to a complete standstill. Breezy, it was not. But it was enjoyable.

The ever-patient Spike sheltered in the shade of a tree from which vantage point this photo was taken. Next time we're both there it's possible we may sail together. Such is the bond of trust. Or the folly of ignorance.

It's a long way from a white Christmas

We woke to snow falling on our Canberra garden this morning. Snow - in Australia! It's not what you expect. It's certainly not what I emigrated from Scotland in search of. I ought not to be too surprised though. We live about ninety-minutes' drive from the Snowy Mountains and, I suppose, the clue is in the their title. 

Spike, of course, was happier than a penguin at the south pole. Not only was it cold (minus two last night and minus four expected tonight), not only was the ground frosted hard, it was actually snowing as we looked out of our window. Wrapped only in her dressing gown Spike went to investigate, to willingly experience the cold (I guess) and take the photograph of our garage roof (which could pass for a ploughed field on a crisp northern morning from my childhood). 

While our intrepid photographer was out capturing her shot I was switching on the fire in our study because ... you know ... it was snowing outside. I ask you, does that seem odd to you?

A good day to enter my sixth decade

Breakfast at Local Press Cafe, Lake Burley Griffen ...

then the Great Moscow Circus ...

then ...

the flat-packed furniture shop ...

before a little bit of campaigning
for Every Australian Counts

The last Billy

This must be the place ...

What could be more difficult than following the assembly instructions of an IKEA Billy bookcase? Tab A into Slot B - as the excellent movie review team at BBC Radio Five Lives 'Wittertainment' programme often reminds us for no particularly solid reason. (It is the best two hours of informed discussion and reviews you are ever likely to come across by the way. Download the podcast. It has spellbinding extra features).

Buying a Billy bookcase from IKEA in Canberra. 

That's what could be more difficult. Although I confess, for the sake of dramatic effect I have exaggerated the degree of construction difficulty. You don't even need to be able to read - look at the drawings, screw in the screws, locate all the noodly bits you've lost on the floor, insert the shelves, slide the completed bookcase into its place. Easy. Mind you, I'm paralysed from the chest down so Spike does assembly. I observe and resist the temptation to mansplain how simple it is or give advice.

But Jeez - buying the last unit we needed to complete our book nook? It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

This is a sad, short tale of not very much human suffering. We were in the store last Friday. The App insisted there were 40cm-wide cases in the 'market hall'. Nope. A helpful IKEA person said they were likely to be on a pallet somewhere back of house. They would be on the shelves from 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning. We'd already lost four hours of our lives wandering the IKEA road to Hell - following their illuminated arrows pointing to corporate good intentions. So we left.

We returned on Tuesday because the App insisted there were 40cm-wide Billy bookcases on the shelves in the market hall. Another hour wandering the pilgrim's way to the slough of despond. Nope. Sold out over the weekend apparently. We ran screaming from the building... bearing an IVER unit we had not been looking to purchase for the kitchen . But you can't leave empty handed, can you?

We returned today because the App and a human being said, 'yep - on the shelves in the market hall'. I elected to stay in the car because - to be frank - dying of heat exhaustion in a sun-baked IKEA car park was preferable to another hike around IKEA's path to the underworld. Spike, fortunately, is more clever than I am. She took the short cut via the canteen with its infinite supply of Swedish meatballs before returning, some hours later ... OK forty minutes ... with the slim bookcase to complete our set.

I will bet you good money the Library at Alexandria took less time to construct than our suburban idyll. Next time, we'll just leave the damn books piled on the floor where they do no one harm.

Houston ... we have a Triffid

When we bought the house three years ago there was an old wheelbarrow strategically positioned in an empty spot of the front garden. It contained a bed of small, uninteresting succulents barely reaching the top of the barrow sides. The plants have grown quite a bit in the intervening years and are now in danger of becoming quite interesting indeed. 

About three weeks ago they all began to look bigger, broader, more ... more ... succulent. And in the last fortnight or so, through days when the temperature regularly reached 30 degrees plus and almost touched 40 degrees a few times, despite several ferocious thunder storms and in the face of two wild hail storms, one of the succulents has shot up - straight into the air, heading towards half a metre.  It reminds me of the fictional Triffids.  Who knows what it will do next?

Summer in Australia ...... a winter wonderland?????

Not quite a polar vortex ...

... but enough to trouble a plaster-cast wombat
and his friends - the teapots.

We had temperatures in the high-thirties last week - 38 and 39 degrees, a total fire-ban and plants in dire need of rain.  This evening, as we arrived home from shopping, this lot and much, much more fell in two minutes.

At the end of a hot, frustrating day in a kiln room ...

... the need to prune a rioting bush is irresistable

Wet ...

Photo: Rohan Thomson

Art - eat - art - coffee

Fred Williams - Lysterfield triptych.  NGA

A day off from the office to spend time with friends visiting from Scotland, Barbara McKissack and Brian Smith.  After Spike gave us the guided tour of the Canberra Glassworks - where one of her works sits in a kiln slowly lowering its temperature before being extracted tomorrow - we enjoyed a more than decent, very late brunch on the Kingston foreshore - at the Local Press Cafe.  Then we headed for the National Gallery of Australia to see its recently re-located and re-hung national collection.  (I'm afraid we all agreed we could give the Tom Roberts 'blockbuster' show a miss.  Personally, I feel I've seen the sheep-shearing scenes enough.  There may be more to discover in them.  My opinion may change. Or not.)

On the other hand I never tire of seeing the Fred Williams triptych. It does something but I don't quite know what or understand why.  But that doesn't matter.  You simply need to look.

All our yesterdays ... or maybe some of them

What would we do without Facebook, now?  How did we survive without it before?  With our mobile phone cameras and a narcissistic attention to the trivial pursuits of an ordinary life, almost anything may now be preserved for posterity.  In this case, three years ago today, it rained in Canberra.

This morning a computer-generated message popped up on my Facebook feed.  "Douglas", the message read, "we care about you and the memories you share here.  We thought you'd like to look back on this post from 3 years ago." I wonder about the 'we' in that message. Who cares about me? My best friend, the Facebook algorythym. 

Suspended below the message was a photograph Spike took from the balcony of the odd little room we rented for nearly three months while we waited to find, then move into, permanent accommodation; the house we bought in Gilmore and now call home.  We were staying at the Capital Executive Apartment Hotel on Northbourne Avenue, North Canberra.  I was at the start of my twenty months with the National Disability Insurance Agency and we had moved out of the apartment in Ashfield but not yet found our 1980's brick bungalow on the city's southern fringe.  We were always amused by the sign outside the building offering the dubious attraction of the hotel's "Cuddle 'n' Bubble PACKAGE"  Did we miss one of life's opportunities by not paying the extra?  I think not.

It had been a painfully hot start to the year.  At times it was easier to stay put in that cramped space than venture outdoors.  But that afternoon the Heavens opened to give us brief respite.  The photograph does not do justice to the way the rain bounced off the road and pavement.  Next day, as I recall, the heat returned and my ordinary life continued ... but sadly unremarked by my friends at Facebook.

The drive home is nearly over

Vanity, vanity. They name is ... Dougie

Busy day at day two of the NDS ACT conference, chairing three sessions (one delivered by my good friend Barbel Winter of Futures UpFront). But darlings, it's all about ME!!

Karen Southgate.  Pic by NDS

Here's me chairing a session on risk management presented by Karen Southgate, employee of NSW Ageing Disability and Home Care Agency and mother of a young man with disability who wants to jump out of an aeroplane.

Daniel Kyriacou. Pic by NDS

And there's me chairing a session on the crucial role of front line staff as marketeers in the new world of service delivery presented supremely well by the excellent Daniel Kyriacou.

Final panel discussion. Pic by NDS

And here's the stuck live-captioning screen recording for posterity my final words of the previous session (led by Barbel) while the important final panel discussion got underway.

I paid for all this vain bad karma later on.  Rolling up the ramp of my car in the convention centre car park I tipped over backwards, banged my skull on the tarmac and rolled out my chair.  Meg Savage, a former colleague from the National Disability Insurance Agency had to collar a passer-by - a conference delegate as it turned out - to help lift me back into my chair.

Nothing damaged but my pride we drove to Manuka where we met Spike and fellow former colleagues at the NDIA, Vanessa Attridge and Nigel Baker at Public Bar where we enjoyed a lovely, laughter-filled evening.  Drink was taken ... as we say in Scotland.

If it's in the paper it must be true ...

You forget, after a while, the gentle but unmistakable boost it gives your ego to be quoted in a media outlet - to be 'in the papers' (so to speak) because some reporter thinks you have something worth including in a story.  Today, after a prolonged period of absence from the press, I'm in the local rag, The Canberra Times.

My speech this morning kicked off the content part of the two-day National Disability Services ACT conference on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.  I'm pleased (and relieved!!) that the speech went over well.  Conference participants - from the conference organiser, through the NDIA Board's Chair (who was up speaking straight after me) and members of the audience to folk on Twitter - told me I did well.  That's always satisfying.

Some of the Twitter feedback read like this ...

At the #NDIS conference in ACT, @dougie_herd is rallying the troops by using Hawking's theories to show transformative nature of the @NDIS
— Evan Wallace (@evwallace2) March 22, 2015

this ...

A fantastic presentation by @dougie_herd at the NDS #ACTconference #NDIS
— Source Kids (@SourceKids) March 22, 2015

and this ...

Wow @dougie_herd that was an amazing speech on the #NDIS at the #ACTconference. Follow the live blog here http://t.co/6LQNkdcggs
— NDIS campaign (@EveryAustralian) March 23, 2015

Later in the day I was interviewed by Clare Colley of The Canberra Times.  Her article in the online version (I doubt it made the print version) with my couple of positive quotes can be read here.

Not a bad day's work, all things considered.

And just in case the newspaper culls old links, here's the text of the story.

People with a disability would be at risk of poor quality support and struggle to find a place with providers if service prices remain too low, a disability peak body warns.
Pricing has been just one of the problems identified in the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in the ACT, National Disability Services chief executive Ken Baker said.
About 650 NDIS participants, carers, and providers are meeting in Canberra for the NDS's two-day conference this week – the largest of its kind in the ACT.
When the NDIS roll-out began in the ACT last July, the territory's pricing was the highest in the country, but Dr Baker said the NDS felt service pricing especially for one-to-one support was inadequate across the country and negotiations were continuing with the National Disability Insurance Agency.

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"The price underpins service quality and choice, if the price is too low there won't be enough providers to offer services or the quality of service they will offer will be inadequate," he said.
"In general across Australia the new prices [under the NDIS] are less than providers have been receiving."
Transitioning from the ACT government funded system had also proved problematic with some providers forced to carry the financial burden when there was a gap before NDIS funds began, Dr Baker said.
The planning and assessment for NDIS participants was another area that needed improvement, with Dr Baker advocating for the role to be handed over to the non-government sector rather than the NDIA.
"I think it's reasonable the agency [NDIA] would want to check people's eligibility and allocate them an individual budget, but much of that discussion about what's the best way to support this person to achieve their goals is best taken place outside the agency with their family and service providers," he said.
Rather than the desperate lack of cash that strangled the sector previously, disability advocate Dougie Herd from Every Australian Counts said the new challenge was taking feedback from NDIS participants to ensure the scheme met their justifiably high standards and eased their anxieties.
"It's better for us to work to solve these problems of new support, growth and development rather than the old system in which the problem was really about when will we ever get enough money to meet people's needs," he said.
"All jurisdictions have been rationed by available dollars over the last 10 years or so."
Mr Herd said before the roll-out there were about 2500 people with a disability accessing the ACT system; the extra money made available under the NDIS would allow the number to double by the end of 2019.
While Dr Baker was confident all the issues will be ironed out as the ACT trial site transition continues, he said many questions surrounding the NDIS rollout could not be answered while the design of the scheme was still evolving making it difficult for organisations and individuals to plan.
"At present it feels like a construction site, it has all the promise and excitement… but all the frustration, disruption and problems of building something new while the plan is still evolving," he said.
Dr Baker said unlike other trial sites the NDIS roll-out in the ACT offered an opportunity to examine how people with a disability who missed out a full NDIS package could still access support.
While the number of providers in the ACT was sufficient for now, Dr Baker said as the scheme expands there will be room for more with interstate organisations already expressing interest.
Mr Herd said he expected new forms of service support to cope with the increasing demand.

I thought I left 'all-nighters' when I left university!!!!!

So ... big speech in the morning, making the opening address to 650 conference delegates at the National Convention Centre, Canberra.  I finally started to get an idea of what I might say and how I might say it early this afternoon.  It's a sign of how (uncharacteristically) nervous I am about tomorrow's presentation that I decided to write a text.  I usually don't.  I started writing around seven-thirty this evening.  I'm maybe half way through and it seems to be holding its themes and structure together, so that's a hopeful sign.  

Here is one thing for sure.  No sleep for me tonight.

Freewheelin' Fyshwick

Before ...

The day began with Spike attempting emergency repairs on the broken axle housing on a front wheel of my wheelchair.  Sadly it was beyond redemption.  After maybe twenty years of use should I be surprised?  No, I don't think so either.

The irrepairable broken wheel necessitated a trip to the wheelchair supplies store, aptly named
Mobility Matters.  It's in Fyshwich, perhaps the oddest but in many ways most practical suburb in this already odd national capital of ours.  Set apart from the rest of the city, on the north side of the Monaro Highway, one can buy anything ... or almost anything.  

There's a Bunnings, Pet Store, Harvey Norman, Clark Rubber plus a host of other retailers of choice for an endless range of practical shopping purposes.  Along the many winding, interweaving (not to say confusing) side streets there are innumerable electricians, plumbers, tile & bathroom appliance sellers, re-sellers and much, much more.  There's one antiques seller that I know of; the maker of Australia's finest macrons, reputedly; at least one daggy sex shop (adjacent to JayCar where Spike buys her LED bulbs for glass works - which is the only way I know about the sex store by the way) and what one must take to be a brothel, currently called the Lollipop Lounge (sure makes me want to enter ... not) painted in what may or may not be intended as an ironic pink.  I suspect 'may not' is the favourite in that each way bet. 

Anyway, we parked outside Mobility Matters inside which Spike conducted protracted negotiations while I - bereft of a functioning wheelchair - entertained myself to the best of my ability inside the car listening to local radio.  Negotiations were not straightforward.  

The repair man was 'away' for an unspecified duration but I could leave my wheelchair and borrow one of theirs until the repair was completed.  Not dead keen on that option I nevertheless asked (not only because I'm polite) to see the loanable wheelchair, which was then brought out to me.  

Hmmm, I thought.  But I also understood my wobbly wheel would not last long.  

'How long before I'd get mine back?' I asked.

'I wouldn't like to be too definite about that until he's seen it" came the reply.  "Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe the day after"

"Oh well," I said, "if it's just a day or so I can wait until he's back then come over to have the repair done."

"Wait" replied the sales woman, trying to be helpful. "I'll go see."  Then just before heading back inside with the still untested, possibly on loan wheelchair, she paused to add, "I love your accent."

What could one say in response except "thank you.  I love yours too"?  She was a New Zealander.

Spike, who had been patiently spectating, leaned into the car.  "It's amazing what an accent can do for you," she said.  "I asked all those questions - and more - and got none of what you were told."

As she pulled herself back out the car Spike paused.  "She thinks you're my father you know." It's neither the first time nor, I suspect, will it be the last time we're allocated those roles in the minor dramas that interrupt the business of getting on with life together.

Spike followed the woman and the empty wheelchairs - mine and theirs - back into the shop.  I waited, searching local radio stations for anything to pass the time.  I now know more about the finals of local sheep dog trials than is necessary, strictly speaking, for a man in my position.  But it was interesting enough in its own way.

... and after.

Some time later Spike returned with the New Zealand born sales woman and my wheelchair sporting two new front wheels, fitted I know not by whom and nor does Spike because the job was done without consulting us.  But I'm not complaining because the woman, who smiled in a friendly, helpful way, told us we'd been charged only for the parts (new to me but clearly used lightly by some unknown other before me) and not for the labour involved.  Maybe the 'away' repair man had unexpectedly returned from 'away', wherever 'away' might have been; lunch, the lavatory, a pub?  It matters not.

We drove off through the puzzling maze of Fyshwick streets in search of a camera repair shop that turned out to be located six doors down from the Lollipop Lounge.  

"Sorry," Spike was told.  "We don't do Nikon. They won't let us open them up." 

Lest there be any doubt here, it was the receptionist inside the camera repair shop, not anyone in the brothel, who gave this information to Spike.  Tell you the truth, I suspect the staff inside the Lollipop Lounge, if asked, could open up almost anything.

More football

Tonight saw the last of my five games at the Canberra Stadium.  Iraq versus Palestine.  Now there is a contest I would never have imagined previously I'd be watching.  But there we were, Spike and I plus somewhere in the region of 8,000 to 10,000 enthusiastic (not to say fanatical) supporters, mostly Iraqui nationals.  The man with the big drum was but one of many drummers who were unceasing in their desire to make themselves heard.  They succeeded.  

The game was enjoyable but the result was never in doubt.  How could it have been?  This is Palestine's first official tournament.  Five members of the squad were prevented from travelling because of visa restrictions.  The team gave their all but a victory was always going to be beyond their capabilities ... this time.  Their supporters didn't seem to mind too much.  They cheered on their team with the same passion as any bunch of avid fans but by half time it was pretty clear the night belonged to Iraq.  Unpeturbed, the Palestine supporters - some expatriots plus a bunch of Aussie supporters politically of the emergent nation settled for a flag-waving, drum-beating procession around the stadium.  Everyone in the ground seemed pleased they were there.  Sometimes that's enough; a victory in its own right.

The evening was marred a little by an argument I got into with an Iraqi supporter who refused to vacate the seat next to the wheelchair spot I was occupying.  He and his mates had been standing up, crowding the space as their team took the field, which is when Spike and I arrived.  Most of the guys moved so I could take the wheelchair spot.  One guy sat down next to me.  I asked him to move so Spike could join me.  He declined, telling me he was recovering from a broken ankle.  The ding dong commenced.  He refused my request to prove the seat was his by showing me his ticket.  He refused the same request from stewards and armed police officers.  Our ding dong continued.  In the end his mates persuaded him the fight was not worth the prize.  They moved away but not too far away.  They stood througout the match, jumping for joy when Iraq scored, as you would if you were an Iraqi.  Broken ankle entirely healed it would seem.

China versus North Korea

It was game five at the Canberra Stadium tonight (my fourth thanks to a puzzling attack last Tuesday of what doctors don't call 'the wobblies').  The traffic queued for a couple of kilometres ahead of the parking sites as we turned off the highway at Belconnen, confirming that tonight's game would be best attended of the group stage games in the nation's capital.  I reckon it's likely to be the best attended game of Canberra's contribution to the Asian Cup. As we made our way to the entrance, where many hopeful ticket buyers were arrayed in lines before the box office, a voice announced - a little forlornly - that only 30 tickets remained.  When, maybe a minute later, the same voice announced all tickets had been sold no one in the lines seemed inclined to believe her and move.  

Inside the ground, packed with thousands of the most polite football spectators I've ever encountered, the game was seven minutes old and China one goal ahead by the time we reached our spots.  We were surrounded by Chinese Australians most of whom were wearing what looked like the same one-size-fits-all red T-shirt bearing the legend - in English and hanji characters - GO CHINA.  Looking around the stadium it was clear someone was doing good business that night.  There were thousands of people wearing t-shirts.

The game ended in a victory for China, which pleased the vast majority of the 20,000 spectators.  North Korea gave the opposition a run for its money in the second half and only the woodwork denied the Koreans the draw they probably deserved.  I have one more game to go here in Canberra, which is Iraq v Palestine next Tuesday then it's up to Sydney on Friday for the first of the knock-out games that lead to the final.  

Go Socceroos, although after the loss to South Korea I hae ma doots ... as we say in the old country, where we know everything there is to know about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

14 seconds is all it takes

I attended game 13 of the Asian Cup tonight accompanied by Colin Tulley, an associate of Spike's father and dedicated supporter of Glasgow Celtic FC.  When I first saw Colin approaching my car from the other side of the Glassworks car park in Canberra I knew it would be him.  Who else that evening would be wearing the green and white hoops of a Celtic strip?

Oddly enough, when we were seated in the Canberra Stadium waiting for the match between United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to kick off, Colin introduced me to a few of his football-loving friends who were also present.  I was suddenly surrouded by a sea of Glasgow accents, friendly men of my age and their adolescent or twentysomething children.  All diehard Celtic fans.  Any one of them could have been dressed like Colin.  Naturally, in the spirit of footbll bantering males, each was advised I am a supporter of Partick Thistle.  None laughed openly but there was an expression on their faces somewhere between jocular pity and sympathy for the terminal illness from which I was suffering.

There was no rain tonight.  It was a perfect evening for playing and watching football: blue sky, warm sunshine, decent crowd reported to us as 7,992 people.  

The UAE took all of 14 seconds to score the first of their 2 match winning goals.  Blink and you'd have missed it.  Lots of fun.  Looking forward to my next match.  China v North Korea.  Never done that pairing before.

A storm and a tea cup

I submitted one of Spike's photographs of our visit to the first game of the Asian Cup to the Guardian's "Witness" section of  'were you there?' photo albums.  My favourite newspaper added me to the (admittedly small) mix today.  Fame at last.  Or not, as the case may be.  But I like Spike's photo, I enjoyed the experience of being at the game and - as anyone who knows me would not be surprised to read - I'm very pleased with the smart arse caption / title I gave to the photo (repeated as the title of this post).  The Guardian asked for a description which I've added below.  I've corrected my original typing mistakes ... vanity, vanity - thy name is Douglas.

"Huge thunderstorm hit Canberra just before Asian Cup game between South Korea and Oman. No shelter for most of the 12,552 spectators. Emergency panchos, umbrellas and for this Scottish resident of Australia's capital a Panama hat bought in Curitiba, Brazil during last year's FIFA World Cup. South Korea deserved winners of good game. Dougie Herd drinking tea. Photo by Spike Deane. Stylish pink poncho NOT by Armani."

More fitba'

Refugee from The Beverly Hill-Billies

Asian Cup 2015.  Game 2 of my 9, United Arab Emirates versus Qatar.  Smaller crowd than yesterday but at just over 5,500 more than I expected after yesterday's rain.  There was no need for the emergency poncho today but looking at the photo of me here maybe it would have been an idea to cover up my complete lack of fashion sense or style.

The game was lively, there were five goals and the UAE ran out deserving winners by 4 goals to 1.  I'll be seeing them again on Thursday, playing against Bahrain.  Enjoying my Asian Cup so far.  And hugely indebted to Spike for keeping me company and taking on role of 'official match photographer'.